Style is nothing but the author’s perfect choice of words and their arrangements. In other words, language plays a major role. The author has to carefully make use of sentences, and paragraphs so that he can produce a specific effect on the reader.

The Point of View Technique:

A writer’s style depends on the point-of-view technique:

1. The omniscient point of view makes a fairly complex style.

2. The first-person point of view can result in a simple style when it is recorded as “spoken,” but it is more complex if written.

3. The central intelligence produces a style that is slightly elevated above the level of intelligence of the focal character.

American Ernest Hemingway’s economical and simple style and his choice of images reveal subtle shifts in his characters’ psychosomatic states. His style is mainly effective first-person narration. You can enjoy the well-known opening paragraph of the 1927 story In Another Country:

“In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.”

I consider Anita Desai’s “Clear Light of Day” as a poetic novel as it considerably deals with symbols and suggestions. Her use of “the house” imagery is at the center which signifies dust, dullness and decay.

As the novel begins, you’ll notice that the house of the Das family does not change except decays. Like Anita Desai’s other novels, the setting is Old Delhi. The interesting thing you’ll notice is she skillfully synthesizes the image of house with the lives of the Das family. The house is associated with sickness, dust, and disorder. And for that reason, the “grey” color is described again and again.

So, the house reflects the mentality and sickness of the entire Das family. In other words, nobody in the Das household enjoys life, all merely exists! The sickness and disorder pervade in the mind of the family members. This house is exactly in contrast with the house of Haider Ali and that is why Raja gets attracted towards it.

For this house of Das family, the symbol of “web” is described which is apt from every point of view. As I say the house does not change but decays, it is fair to remark that because of such sickness and dusty atmosphere of the house everybody feels “suffocated” and that is why they try to find escape in one thing or another. For that reason, Raja is attracted towards Haider Ali’s house. Tara often goes to Mira Mansi and finally, she succeeds in escaping completely by marrying off Bakul. Baba seeks escape in music and plays his gramophone all the time. Bimla becomes the professor of history. In this way, the house plays a vital role behind the escapist nature of the Das household.

Anita Desai beautifully describes the state of the Delhi city. Sometimes, the whole city seems to be dead and the houses are referred to in the novel as the “tombs”. The house of the Das family seems to be deserted and therefore, Bimla does not prevent Baba playing his gramophone loudly because she thinks that the silence of the house is more dreadful. For her, the noise produced by Baba’s gramophone gives peace to her. Even when Mr. Das and his wife were alive, they were just like the outsiders as Mr. Das was known for his entrance. The mother was either engrossed in the cards or confined to the bed. That is why Tara sometimes feels that even the ghost of her father could create the noise of papers and nothing else!

The decaying aspect of the house is felt on the Das family and this why the whole family gets scattered and only Bim remains with Baba in the “dead house”. This is how, the house has symbolic significance, which plays a major role in the actions and deeds of the Das household and becomes the central episode in the novel.

Kiran Desai was born on 3rd September, 1971 in New Delhi, India, and lived there until she was 14. Then she went to the United States with her mother. She took her early education in Massachusetts. After completing her education, she started writing in US.

The Inheritance of Loss was published in early 2006. This novel won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. The subject of The Inheritance of Loss is set partly in India and partly in the USA. She shows what is the difference between the living pattern in India and abroad.

A one-act play is a type of play which does not necessarily consist of one act. It is neither an act from full length play. More specifically you can say that the duration of the play may be equal to the time normally required by an act from a full-length play.

A one-act play is an independent as well as a self-sufficient form of art. It also consists of all the elements that you find in a full-length play such as setting, characters, property, stage, conflict, and point of view, theme etc. It also has an organic form with beginning, middle and an end. Unlike a full-length play, the unity of time, place and action do not function fully.

You will see that a one-act play does not have episodic subjects; rather it has a visionary and conceptual unity. It normally represents a single situation, action, and atmosphere leading to deep impression. The characters and the experiences are not complex, you can understand easily.

Since it has a confined canvas, the life experiences it conveys can not be complex and difficult as it happens in a full-length play. The number of characters is bound to be small. Some of the beautiful examples that you will love to read are Donne Byrne’s The Professors, Stanley Houghton’s The Dear Departed, and W. W. Jacobs’s The Monkey’s Paw.

Though the orchestral representation, multidimensional experience, a throbbing effect may not be there in a one-act play, but it certainly has to offer a slice of life as a piece of literature does.

Toni Morrison (1931), an American writer, enjoys a good position as one of the most popular as well as successful black female writers. Her work celebrates the black experience by way of featuring mythic elements, compassion with the humanity in poetic language. Her fifth novel Beloved (1987), which is remarkable for its depth, brilliance and universal appeal, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She also won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993.

What is the Novel All About?

The novel Beloved is the story of Sethe, an unfortunate mother who prefers killing her daughter Beloved rather than letting her grown up as a slave.

This tale is set in Reconstruction Ohio. Morrison vividly sketches the dark picture of slavery and its dehumanizing effects with all mental and physical traumas inflicted on the survivals. She beautifully weaves a ghostly stale in a realistic narrative.

Themes in The Novel:

The novel deals with many complex and enduring themes such as black Americans’ relationship to slavery, the quest for individual, cultural identity, the importance of family and community, the nature of humanity. It is because of Morrison’s unique treatment to these themes her work achieve universality.

Morrison’s Style in the Novel:

Beloved is considered as Morrison’s most successful novel. She makes use of multiple timeframe. She beautifully makes a way for the fantastic occurrences in the novel like that of reappearance of Beloved. The language is poetic which shows her lyric storytelling ability very clearly.

Though the novel stimulated considerable controversy, accusations of racism, several months after its publication, it’s a great piece of work one should really appreciate for its merit.

Epiphany is a popular literary term almost every student of literature is familiar with. It means a manifestation or a sign for something to come. Christian thinkers use this term to denote a manifestation of God’s presence in this world.

The term epiphany reminds of James Joyce who employed this word effectively in his work. He adopted this term to secular experience. He used it to signify a revelation at the time of perceiving a commonplace object. His novels and short stories consist of several epiphanies. For instance; a climatic epiphany is a sort of revelation that Stephan, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, experiences seeing a young girl on the seashore.

In modern poetry and fiction, this idea of epiphany is artistically used to denote the sudden flare of revelation of an ordinary object. James Joyce used it as “moments”. Later on, Shelley used it, in his Defense of Poetry (1821), to describe the most cherished moments. Wordsworth also employed this concept and his ideas revolved around some beautiful moments. For instance; his short poetry like The Solitary Reaper deals with a moment of revelation. His Prelude is full of such visionary moments:

’twas a moment’s pause, –
All that took place within me came and went
As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells,
And grateful memory, as a thing divine.